Pirates of the Mediterranean: An Empirical Investigation of Bargaining with Transaction Costs

Attila Ambrus, Eric Chaney and Igor Salitskiy

No 11-24, Working Papers from Duke University, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper uses ransom prices and time to ransom for over 10,000 captives rescued from two Barbary strongholds to investigate the empirical relevance of dynamic bargaining models with one-sided asymmetric information in ransoming settings. We observe both multiple negotiations that were ex ante similar from the uninformed party’s (seller’s) point of view, and information that only the buyer knew. Through reduced form analysis, we test some common qualitative predictions of dynamic bargaining models. We also structurally estimate the model in Cramton (1991), to compare negotiations in different Barbary strongholds. Our estimates suggest that the historical bargaining institutions were remarkably efficient, despite the presence of substantial asymmetric information.

Pages: 52
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cta
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1954149 main text

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:duk:dukeec:11-24

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Duke University, Department of Economics Department of Economics Duke University 213 Social Sciences Building Box 90097 Durham, NC 27708-0097.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Department of Economics Webmaster ().